warm

intros to VCs

Author

Jorian Hoover
January 28, 2026

Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach and have worked with 50+ founders who’ve raised over $190M.

Wow, over 10 of you emailed me asking to meet up in SF while I’m in town Feb 6-14th! I’m excited to meet each and every one of you — I’m feeling grateful that this newsletter is turning into a bit of a community.

For today’s newsletter, I’ll give my quick take on the death of SaaS, review the latest fundraising rounds Tier 1 VCs led last week, share my recommended VC essays & podcast episodes, and give a deep dive on warm intros when fundraising.

And thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 1.8K+ startup founders and operators/investors from OpenAI, Anthropic, a16z, Lightspeed, etc. If you think someone else might like this newsletter, they can sign up here.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take: end-to-end AI solutions

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead last week (Jan 17-23, 2026)

  3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: warm intro

1. Jorian’s 1min take: the death of SaaS?

A few days ago I stumbled across Saanya Ojha’s essay, The Death of SaaS Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, and I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s a partner at Bain Capital Ventures in the Bay Area.

Her thesis is that while AI has made it much easier to vibe code software, and it’s true that public SaaS companies have taken a beating in the markets, there are many factors on why SaaS is here to stay.

I see two of the factors she mentioned with startups I work with & talk to every week.

The first is data — at the heart of enterprises buying software is data. And that unique data lives somewhere, often in CRMs, ERPs, etc. => AI startups I see often have a tough time getting access to that data — so as I mentioned last week, many are looking to become end-to-end (or system of record) solutions.

The second is vendor fatigue — I have noticed a big shift in how enterprises are approaching buying from AI startups in the past couple years. Two years ago, it felt like IT departments were given a “play” budget to test out various AI products. But now, many enterprises are looking to consolidate vendors.

Either way, it’s getting more competitive for AI startups to compete for enterprise dollars, and they’re not always winning against established SaaS startups who can add on AI to their offerings.

Agree/disagree? What are you seeing in your world?

3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  • Newsletter: “The Death of SaaS Has Been Greatly Exaggerated” (link) by Saanya Ojha, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures. As mentioned above in my 1min take, I thought Saanya shared an excellent breakdown of why SaaS companies likely won’t be fully extinguished by today’s AI startups.

  • Newsletter: “When to Bet on Channel Partners Early” (link) by Liz Christo, Partner at Stage 2 Capital. Stage 2 was co-founded by Mark Roberge, who was one of my sales professors at HBS, and I love their thinking on sales topics for startups.

  • Podcast: “What Venture's Top Voices Expect Next in AI” (link) on the Origins pod by Beezer Clarkson, Partner at Sapphire Partners, and Nick Chirls, Partner at Asylum Ventures. Beezer is an LP and Nick is a GP, and they shared highlights of some of their top VC conversations from the past year.

  • Podcast: “How Foundation Models Evolved: a PhD Journey Through AI’s Breakthrough Era” (link) on The a16z Show with Martin Casado, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Omar Khattab. I recommend this conversation to understand the latest in foundation models and how AI models can better understand intent.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: warm intros

One of the risks of writing a weekly newsletter on startup fundraising is that my advice can get more and more niche the more articles I write.

But from time to time, I want to make sure I’m returning to the basics of how to run a strong fundraise, because it’s the basics that matter most. If you can get the basics right, you’ll be 80% of the way towards setting up a successful fundraise process.

And today I want to speak about warm intros to VCs.

The goal of a strong fundraise prep process

With strong fundraise prep, your goal is to maximize the amount of leverage you have when speaking with investors. And one of the best ways to do that is to significantly increase the number of VCs you’re meeting with when you kick off your fundraise.

But how do you score 50+ meetings with VCs in a 1-2 week period?

Unless you’re Tom Cruise, it’s almost always not through cold emailing VCs.

You may think, “why can’t I cold email VCs? I am a strong founder and have a great idea, so they’ll likely want to meet with me!”

The problem is two-fold:

  1. VCs get flooded with cold outreach from founders. One look at their email inboxes & linkedin DMs and you’ll see the sea of messages they receive. So, it’s VERY hard to stand out and they may miss your deal.

  2. Some (but not all) VCs look down on founders who aren’t able to get a warm intro, thinking “if they can’t get a warm intro to me, how will they possibly run sales for their own startup in the future?”

So, warm intros to VCs are incredibly important in trying to land meetings with VCs.,

How to run a warm intro process

Many founders understand the concept of warm intros, but don’t realize there are multiple steps you need to get right for them to work:

Step 1: you need a large enough network who can intro you to VCs. If not, you need to build out this network.

Step 2: you need to do intro mapping — figure out which VCs you want to get intros to and determine who can intro you (ideally founders). Note: you can also add in the reverse approach, where you ask intro’ers which VCs you should speak with.

Step 3: you need to get the person making the intro excited enough about your deal. They shouldn’t feel like they’re using a bunch of social capital to make the intro.

Step 4: you need to line up enough intros at a similar time to allow for a strong blitz week kickoff to fundraising. Otherwise, your intros won’t come through at the same time. Also, ensure the person making the intro knows the VC well enough.

Step 5: you need to make it as easy as possible for the intro’er to facilitate the introduction, for example through a concise and compelling forwardable email template.

Not all of these steps are easy. For example, building a network if you don’t have one can take work (though it is definitely doable), and if your startup idea and/or your background aren’t compelling, it can be hard to get an intro’er excited.

But getting any one of these steps wrong can materially lower your success rate with landing warm intros to VCs. I’ve seen founders get steps 1 thru 4 right, only to have a disaster of a forwardable email, and the hit rate materially dropped off.

Getting these warm steps right is one of the core things I work 1:1 with founders on, and it’s key to successfully prepping for a fundraise.

The fruits of getting warm intros right

You’ll thank yourself if you can successfully get these warm intro steps right. It can mean the difference between getting 10 meetings with VCs when you kick off your fundraise and 40+ meetings.

Not only will you have more VC meetings, but because the intros came from a trusted source, those VCs will come into the meetings with a better perception of you & your startup.

And that increases the likelihood you’ll get a term sheet (or multiple term sheets) you’re excited about.

So if you’re prepping for a fundraise, or considering doing so in the future, make sure you get your warm intros done right.

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I’ve helped 50+ founders run high-quality fundraises and raise over $190M. Check out jorianhoover.com to read founder testimonials and learn more about my approach.